I actually think their biggest challenge is what players 70-100 want differs from what players 1-20 want, and the tour twisted itself up trying to keep both happy. Then they became a target of an entity with endless money and willing to spend it. They needed to be more proactive vs reactive, but it's basically an unprecedented spot to be in as far as finding your league the target of a motivated, bottomless pit of money

DannyDuberstein said:

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I actually think their biggest challenge is what players 70-100 want differs from what players 1-20 want, and the tour twisted itself up trying to keep both happy. Then they became a target of an entity with endless money and willing to spend it. They needed to be more proactive vs reactive, but it's basically an unprecedented spot to be in

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This is my read as well. It was impossible for the tour to please everyone and doing anything would piss off half your membership (as the new signature events prove). So it primarily did nothing. You can criticize that but it's pretty obvious why the tour was slow to act. The vast majority of their members were mostly happy.

With the possible exception of showing Australia deserves to have a place in the professional golf ecosystem, LIV hasn't done anything other than show a willingness to set billions of dollars on fire.

The PGAT (and Monahan) missed the mark on a pretty simple concept…

You have to keep your needle-movers happy. It's just like any other business in that if your top producers aren't happy, then really nothing else matters. I'm not saying that you have to cowtail completely to them, but you damn sure better listen.

Agree. And I'd say there were plenty in the top 1-20 in the 1-3 years leading up to the LIV breakaway that were not being catered to/having their voices heard. It wasn't just 1-20 vs the rest of the tour.

A couple of other factors to keep in mind though:

1) the formula they were running had worked for most of 100 years

2) the whole WGC model built to cater to the top players was kind of a bust and dying on the vine. So I can see some hesitation to run toward something designed to cater to top players that was kind of a bust

For the most part, their losses have been international players, long-in-the-tooth names, and the a handful of top guys that got 9 figures.

Poot said:

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The PGAT (and Monahan) missed the mark on a pretty simple concept…

You have to keep your needle-movers happy. It's just like any other business in that if your top producers aren't happy, then really nothing else matters. I'm not saying that you have to cowtail completely to them, but you damn sure better listen.

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Tour leadership is not free to just change the tour setup as it wants. It has to get the membership (I.e. the players) to buy in. By basic math, the stars didn't have the votes to build the tour in their favor because they're outnumbered by the rank and file 10-1. There was simply no way for the tour to cater to the stars prior to LIV. LIV did create the leverage the stars needed to force the rank and file to go along with their plans because they could credibly threaten to leave.

I mean, what was your plan, pre-LIV, to get 120 tour players to vote against their self interest for the benefit for 20 guys?

Edit - And there's some irony that the one guy on here who knows a LIV guy is complaining that the tour catered too much to the stars and then other posters are criticizing the tour for not catering enough to the stars. Thus confirming that not only was there was no way for the tour to please everyone but even the middle ground that tried to account for both still left room for both to grumble. Moving off that equilibrium was virtually impossible.

DannyDuberstein said:

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A couple of other factors to keep in mind though:

1) the formula they were running had worked for most of 100 years

2) the whole WGC model built to cater to the top players was kind of a bust and dying on the vine. So I can see some hesitation to run toward something designed to cater to top players that was kind of a bust

For the most part, their losses have been international players, long-in-the-tooth names, and the a handful of top guys that got 9 figures.

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Yeah. The only truly elite guys whose best years were still reasonably in front of them were Bryson and Cam and maybe Brooks. For the money they were offering, that's actually a pretty poor hit rate if the tour is as poorly run as people claim.

I really would like to see a team format on the pga tour when and if this gets settled. 5 or 6 tournaments in the year played under LIV rules with some modifications. Take the top 16 players and have a draft where they can select 3 teammates. Then the liv style tournaments would be 4 rounds. The first 3 rounds are shotgun start and played with team rules where all 4 players scores are counted. Team winners decided after round 3. Then round 4 is singles only with traditional starts based on where each player had finished after the 3rd day.

To bring it back to present day, apparently there's a big meeting this afternoon between the pga, the pif, and Trump.

Team golf works great every other year. No one gets excited about a random team with Hideki, Cantlay, Hatton and Henley. LIV tried, but everyone knows it's a failure.

Meh - I'm still not fully sold on the challenge of trying to juggle the desires of the top talent versus the rest of the roster. I don't think the PGAT made any real effort to work with the situation.

They were the ones that stuck their foot in the ground and said that anyone who joins LIV would lose all status, etc. (Which by an extension was world ranking points). They could have allowed these independent contractors to play on LIV the same way they had previously done with the Euro/DP World, etc. All they had to mandate was that the minimum participation would still be required. LIV was never going to take all of the players - they were only going to get what they could.

If a player wanted to cash grab at what they considered a three day clown show - fine, go over there and get a check. The fans clearly don't care and neither do we. But if you want points and to play in the majors, you have to do it on the legacy tours.

But as Bunk mentioned earlier, the PGAT is stubborn and stiff about doing things their way until they're forced to change.

JCA1 said:

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To bring it back to present day, apparently there's a big meeting this afternoon between the pga, the pif, and Trump.

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well, Tiger (and Adam Scott) was at the White House today; he was prominent at the black history month celebration. The only thing missing was Trump's little buddy Bryson.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/pga-tour-pif-deal-white-house-meeting-tiger-woods-donald-trump-monahan-yasir

As for team golf. I am with Rory. You need to have a few team dedicated events where these teams go head to head. That would really make the competitive juices start to flow.

I agree. Once a month maybe have the team events.

I'm just ready to see all those LIV guys with Jim nantz commentating overly corny phases